


My first day (without him)

by tyrionsonoftywin



Category: Scrubs (TV)
Genre: Angst, Denial, Hurt, M/M, Perry misses JD, Pining, Set after 8x19
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:02:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24020266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tyrionsonoftywin/pseuds/tyrionsonoftywin
Summary: Perry's first day after JD left Sacred Heart.
Relationships: Perry Cox/John "JD" Dorian
Comments: 3
Kudos: 43





	My first day (without him)

**Author's Note:**

> Soooooooooo, I had the idea for this OS while reading Shea Serrano's PDF "Where do you think we are: Ten illustrated essays about Scrubs", which is pretty amazing. At some point, he mentions that we had never the chance to see Dr. Cox's first day after JD left. And I thought that yeah, I could write it and cry senseless about it. So I did.

Newbie had left.

Not having him around shouldn't have bothered Perry so much (the kid had had some days off, to his delight, in those eight years, when he hadn't led him to think of killing him more than three times a day, and in any case now that Perry was Chief of Medicine he didn't see him as before; which, again, didn't bother him _at all.)_

No, he wasn’t bothered, but he had some strange feeling, connected to the fact that he probably would never see him again.

Okay, where did _that_ come from?

Of course he would see Newbie again.

 _Right?_ A very small voice inside him asked.

Yeah, right.

He would surely come to see Gandhi and Carla, and Barbie was still working there so maybe, _maybe,_ there was a tiny chance that he would drive forty-five minutes (not that Perry had paid attention to how far his new home/hospital/city/whatever-Newbie’s-new-thing was) to pick her up. And say hi to an old friend.

Gandhi. Say hi to Gandhi. He already said that, didn't he?

And then, _maybe_ , who knows, Carla could have invited him and Jordan to spend Christmas together sometime, or anything else, and if he hadn't killed the devil he had as an ex-wife on the way to their apartment, Perry would have gone and if he was lucky - no, _unlucky,_ definitely _unlucky_ \- Newbie would have been there, too.

So he would see him again.

So why did he feel like when Jordan left home the first time?

Perry ran a hand over his face as he sighed and glanced at his watch. It was only 8:00 in the morning. He absolutely had to calm down.

But, _hell,_ he didn’t even know why he was freaking out.

_I’m not freaking out!_

Maybe J— no, maybe given the situation, it was better to call him _Cassandra—_ Cassandra’s intrusivenessin his thoughts was due to what happened the evening before. Definitely. It wasn’t something that happened to him every day, to show his emotions. It must have shaken him. But that night had gone smoothly, he had also managed to tell Jack the bedtime story. Why was he thinking about it in that moment?

His monologue of thoughts was interrupted by three loud knocks on the door.

Perry sighed. Again. That day he was sighing a lot. "Come in"

Carla seemed as strange as he did. She closed the door and sat across from him without saying a word. Perry was alarmed.

"Everything good?"

Carla shook her head. “I miss him."

There was no need to say who she was missing.

Perry cleared his throat. "Carla, I don't have time for this no-"

"Oh shut up!" She snapped. "We all know that you love him!"

 _What did she just say?_ It was ridiculous. He should have laughed at her.

Perry swallowed. Hard. "What did you just say?"

"You love him." Carla shrugged. "Everyone here loves JD. Even the Janitor, I think."

Oh. She meant... sure. For a moment, Perry had understood... something else. In fact, it was ridiculous to accuse him of _loving_ the kid. Mainly because he didn't _love_ him. Not in _that_ sense.

"Even if what you say is true, and, believe me: _it's really nawt,_ it's not that _this_ will magically disappear and I will have the time to hold your hand saying _oh, Carla, you will see him pretty much every week, because your husband is also his wife._ "

He said, and Carla glanced at the desk full of papers.

"Fine" she commented. "But when you want to talk about it, I'm here"

She got up from the chair. _Talk about what?_

"Talk about what?"

Carla smiled. "About the fact that you miss him."

Oh, wasn't Gandhi there for that stuff?

As soon as she left, Perry took his head in his hands.

He was already looking forward to that day ending. 

The Sacred Heart was strangely silent when Perry went out to ckeck patients with the interns. Barbie was leaning against the nurse station, seeming tired and sad.

"I can't believe JD is gone"

_Is she really complaining? She's the one who comes home to him tonight._

Perry was tempted to say it, but it seemed a strange thing to say. So he didn't. 

Since when he didn't snap at Barbie anymore?

However, he didn't have time to open his mouth that Gandhi joined her, putting an arm around her shoulders. "I miss him so much that it hurts sometimes."

Perry grimaced.

And _that_ was the new Chief of Surgery? He must have been drunk when he chose him.

He vanished before Carla could say anything. Like the fact that everyone loved Newbie. Even the Janitor.

What was he supposed to do? Right, the interns.

They were... distracted.

"What's wrong with you?" They weren't even _scared._

"I think everyone is missing Dr. Dorian a little bit, today." An extremely high-pitched voice said. She was the intern who helped Newbie the day before. How had he nicknamed her? Sunshine? Anyway, she _knew_. She was, therefore, an _enemy._ And Perry had promised to make life hell for her. But he felt too tired for this, so he would start the next day.

“The fact that you miss Dr. Dorian is not an excuse for not doing your job. Do you think patients will stop being sick because Dr. Dorian is gone?" Okay, maybe he should have worked on his tone of voice because instead of sounding terrible, he seemed... almost, _almost_ sorry.

However, the kids looked at each other.

"He would understand" The little shit whispered again to the intern next to her, perhaps thinking that Perry would not hear her. But, with that tone of voice, her whispering was like a normal person’s talking. 

"If Dr. Cox had left, Dr. Dorian would drag himself around the hospital like a zombie"

Oh God, the next day he would _really_ kill her.

Lunch. He had to focus on lunch.

There was steak.

Eating was, in fact, a recreational activity that interested him very much. So _obviously_ Jordan cut him off, sitting across from him.

"What's wrong with this hospital today?"

Perry shrugged. "What do you mean?"

He didn't even know why he was pretending nothing. He could have made fun of all the sad people he saw with Jordan. But he was tired.

“Come on Perry, don't you see? It's as if everything has… gone out ”

Perry didn't want to think about the fact that Newbie cheered everyone up, and sometimes, when he wasn't extremely annoying, he found himself thinking that... he was shining. He illuminated.

No. He absolutely didn't want to think about it.

"Newbie's gone, yesterday" 

He went back to his steak.

"Oh, right. And how are you doing? "

Perry raised an eyebrow and tried to smile. “Magnificently. I am free. It took eight years, but I'm finally free."

Jordan, as expected, didn't believe him.

But strangely, she said nothing about it.

"We should hang out with them." She only said, nodding her head at Barbie, Carla and Gandhi's table, a place left empty. “You know, for Christmas. They have kids. We have kids."

Perry sighed and pretended he hadn't thought of it himself. If he had proposed it to Jordan, she would have tormented him. "Whatever."

It was a long day. A lot of long days had happened to him. Long days. It had nothing to do with Newbie. It was just a long day.

"Hey, I think you're going to have to hire a new janitor" Gandhi said when he entered his office.

 _Oh, come on_.

"As much as I agree that the one we have now -the tall one- doesn't do its job worthily, the last thing I need now is to have to think about firing someone."

“Oh, you don't have to fire him. He's gone."

Perry frowned. "Sorry?"

"He's gone. When he heard that JD was not coming back, he left."

Perry thought it was legitimate, since he understood that torturing Newbie was that man's only reason for living. He couldn't help thinking about Carla's words. And Jordan's.

"Okay, I'll hire another." He said, returning to fill in the files on which he was concentrated. Or pretended to be.

"You miss JD, don’t you?"

Gandhi's words made his head jerk up. "Gandhi, don't you even dare-"

"Nobody believes you," He interrupted him. "Everyone misses him"

Perry didn't answer, mainly because he didn't know what to say. He felt a weight on his stomach.

"I have to work." He cut short. "And you should too"

Gandhi left the office slamming the door.

Perry looked at the clock. Four hours. Four.

And just because Perry was _really_ lucky that day, the elevator had stopped.

"We just have to leave him alone" Said a voice on the other side that sounded like Barbie's. "I'm sure he misses JD, but he doesn't want to show it"

Perry gritted his teeth. Why did everyone in that hospital think he was _hurt_ , or something like that? He was perfectly fine.

"But he's suffering!" Carla objected.

He wanted to scream.

“He really is, Elliot. He didn't even yell at me when I told him he missed him. He tried, but eventually gave up.” There was Gandhi too. What was that, a meeting? _Let's talk about Dr. Cox and his non-feelings for Newbie waiting for the elevator_ club?

For once, however, Barbie seemed the healthiest. At least she said they had to leave him alone. Which they had to do.

"How is JD going?" Carla asked.

Perry, suddenly interested, moved closer to the elevator doors.

"You won't believe it, but he just wrote me that he misses not having anyone calling him by girl names" Oooh, Barbie, _this_ was a spicy thing. They giggled.

The elevator opened, and all four of them jumped.

"Were you listening to us?" Carla looked at him crossing her arms in front of her chest.

Perry grimaced. And didn't answer. And left.

Then he smiled. Newbie missed girl names. He had never been good at math, but that equation was easy. Newbie was missing _him._

The smile did not last long, because Perry had to try to understand why he was that happy that the kid was missing him. Especially because he didn't miss Newbie at all. Okay, maybe a little bit. But it wasn't enough to be _happy_ , to _smile_ at such a thing

Maybe he should have sent him a message with the pager where he called him Ginger, but what he had said the night before was enough, wasn't it?. He had called him _friend._ That word had sounded strange and wrong in Perry's mouth, even though he had thought about it for a long time and yes: Newbie could be considered his friend. Not that he had many. 

What really made him uncomfortable, however, was what _he_ said.

 _You smell like a father figure._ He thought Newbie had gone through that phase. Or maybe it was just a joke. It had made him feel _dirty,_ and even now that he thought about it, _that_ seemed extremely wrong, too. Besides, they didn't have all those years of difference.

Okay, enough of thinking of the years of difference he had with Newbie. It was strange and disturbing.

And Newbie was with Barbie.

_What has that to do with it?_

Nothing. It had nothing to do with it. He was just thinking about random things.

And he was with Jordan.

_Oooh._

Yeah, “ _oooh.”_

Perry put his hands behind his head.

Not only he missed Newbie.

He was in love with the kid.

**Author's Note:**

> I considered to post this in "My Collection" (where I post all the OS JDox I write) but I didn't feel like that. Also, maybe I will post another chapter just because I hate angst with no happy ending - I want to suffer, yeah, but I want my fluff too.  
> Right now I don't have ideas to continue this fic: I do think it's just perfect as it is, despite what I just said, lol.  
> But maybe I will continue!  
> Hope you enjoyed the fic, feedback is appreciated! x


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